Is Jim DeMint Involved in the Smear Campaign Against Nikki Haley?

NOTE FROM ERICK:http://www.redstate.com/senator_jim_demint/2010/10/29/stand-with-nikki-haley/

Jim DeMint has denounced the attacks on Nikki Haley and fully supports her. This post is silly and not factual.

If Jim DeMint has endorsed Nikki Haley, I sure can’t find it anywhere. His good buddy Dr. David Woodard gets two mentions on his campaign website while Haley gets nada. There’s no mention of an endorsement from DeMint on Nikki Haley’s campaign website, either. What’s going on here?

Senator DeMint has not in any way disassociated himself from the smear campaign by the group, “Conservatives for Truth in Politics” that was co-founded by his good friend Dr. Woodard and the infamously stretched face of Cyndi Mosteller. That’s an awfully high profile connection to ignore in this case considering the extreme nature of Woodard’s smear campaign. Just how deep is DeMint involved in this smear campaign?

And it’s not as though DeMint faces a real opponent this election cycle. For him, it’s nowhere near being a tight race. He could at the very least, if not actually helping her campaign and endorsing her, strongly condemn Woodard and others who are obviously attempting to defeat the GOP candidate for the Governor of South Carolina. Everyone in the party I’ve talked to had either assumed he had already endorsed her or were expecting him to.

DeMint has not responded to my emails inquiring into this matter. He has also not responded to GOP leaders who have been in contact with his staff trying to find out the same thing.

As usual, something stinks to high heaven in the state of South Carolina where politics are concerned. Of all people, I would have thought DeMint, if he meant the things he has said, would have endorsed Nikki Haley and condemned Woodard and company. I have long admired him but he seems to be, like many other politicians judging from this and other past behavior, an opportunist at heart. He also seems to have his eye on making a run for President. I would hate to think that such a goal is the reason he has jumped on the tea party bandwagon.According to a very good source, DeMint actually considers Haley a threat to his planned run for President. Or it could be that Haley’s candidacy is, as McMaster described the effects in the latter days of the primary campaign, sucking all the air out of the room and making it difficult for others to get any attention. If Haley is considered by DeMint or his team to be competition or a diversion to his popularity, I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. From everything I can tell, Nikki has no plans to run for anything else if she gets Governor. She was very explicit on the matter in an email to me several months ago, telling me that eight years as Governor is all she wants and after that she will not be running for office again. I have no reason to disbelieve her and have been privy to some of her thoughts on the negative nature of the smear campaigns (yes, there have been several, one of them waged starting last year) against her. She is going up against some very powerful forces (mostly of the corporate welfare machine) in this state that are being ignored or minimized by virtually everyone in the media.

I imagine that her mind would not be easily changed on running for another office despite the attempts by me and others to persuade her. I was hoping that she’d run for US Senate afterwards but I can understand, especially now after all the smears and other tactics used against her, how she would have had more than enough of politics after being Governor.